The Man in the Yellow Jacket
I turned back towards the house looming out of the darkness, made more intense by the shadow of the mountain behind it. The lights, which were switched on inside, were shining at me behind closed curtains. Before I could step out of the shadows of the pitch black sky, I would have to cross the 30 meter stretch of lawn, which constitutes our front garden, and sits between the house and the driveway. This was where I was now standing after letting my friend out. The grass was already damp with dew, which soaked my bare feet as I took to a sprint. I jumped up the four steps onto the patio, two at a time, and was finally glazed in light. I already felt warmer, despite still being outside, and quickly crossed the concrete tiles towards the sliding doors, which sat on the far, right side of the house. I faced two more stairs before sliding the glass doors open and stepping across the threshold into the dining room.
It was a peaceful Wednesday evening; with a slight chill in the air, despite the beautiful spring afternoon. My friends had come over for one last night of relaxation before the stress of Matric finals, which were starting the following week, took over. They left early, wanting to get a good night’s sleep, in preparation for studying the next day. It was just a few minutes after nine when I closed the gate after Kristen, the last to leave, and hurried back up to the house, buzzing with the energy of the evening.
I stepped through the doors and turned towards my older sister, Simone, waiting impatiently for me on the other side of the room. What I saw, as I looked into her eyes, was a reflection of my own, save for the expression they wore. Before I could take one step further into the house, she shouted over to me to lock the doors. While I obeyed her command, she rushed over to the keypad on the opposite end of the house, still clearly visible from where I was standing, and punched in the alarm code as soon as she was certain the door was closed. She had been feeling uneasy all evening, but I had my friends over and, because she didn’t know why, I hadn’t taken her very seriously. We had no reason to be worried.
It was, in fact, our first evening alone at home without our parents, or any type of guardian. Mom and Dad had had a bright and early start that morning, leaving for Stanford at 7am to meet friends for a quick breakfast, where after they began the Fynbos Trail, which meant they’d be gone for three nights. Due to this, Simone had come down from Stellenbosch, where she was completing her first year of her Fine Arts degree, to stay with Hannah, our younger sister, and I. Our parents were hesitant to leave us alone at first, but after much discussion it was decided that we were old enough to take care of ourselves. Simone had spent an entire year in England by herself and was now living in Stellenbosch, for goodness sake; she could look after her younger sisters.
Hannah hadn’t stuck around in the lounge to say goodbye to my friends when they decided it was time to head home, but had gone off to bed early. She was writing her Grade 10 final English and Afrikaans creative writing papers the following day and wanted to go through her formats one last time before getting some sleep. She was therefore lying in her bed on her phone, about to turn off the light, when she heard me come in and Simone say “Carla, close and bolt the doors, I’m switching on the alarm.”
It was the usual routine, when shutting up the house for the night, to let the dogs out one last time before retiring to bed, but this hadn’t crossed our minds on this particular evening. Rocky, our salt and pepper miniature schnauzer, tended to enjoy roaming the garden at night, but had been lying in the lounge, quite a way away from the door, all evening. He had been lethargic for days. We had taken him to the vet and he was put on medication, but there wasn’t much else we could do. Molly, also a miniature, and even smaller than most, wasn’t one to run around outside barking at the usually patrolling guards, so she was keeping Rocky company on the couch. Unfortunately for us, the guards weren’t out traversing the track on the mountain, behind our house, that night either.
I slid the doors shut, flicked the lock and then punched in the dead bolts, which sat in the top left and right corners of the two doors. I pulled the curtains closed and turned to face the interior of the house. Although the renovations, completed only a few months prior, gave the house a more modern look, it exhumed homeliness and the lively energy of the family who lived in it. The walls were covered in paintings, completed by either my mom or my sisters, and every surface was littered with belongings. One immediately got the sense that an artistic family inhabited the space between the walls, which allowed for some rather ironic running jokes, as I did not fit this profile, despite my mom’s insistence that I could if I tried. To her dismay, however, I didn’t want to.
Viewing the house from my position at the sliding doors, I was greeted with an open plan design. This permitted me to see Simone clearly, despite her position being on the opposite end of the house, where she was setting the alarm next to our infrequently used bulky, wooden front door. Luckily for me, it also allowed Simone to get to me within seconds from when I heard a BANG-BANG-BANG on the door behind me. It took me a moment to realise that the people thumping on the door, which I had just locked, had not arrived for a social visit. I wasn’t the only one of the three of us who was confused by the noise, as Hannah, lying in her bed, had associated this sound with that of a painting being knocked off the wall. It took the screams, first from me and then from Simone, to wake her up to the possibility of danger. Fortunately, it wasn’t only Hannah who heard the screams that night.
Upon hearing the slap of palms hitting glass behind me, I spun around and hastily pulled open the curtains. Sadly, the possibility of danger was the last thing on my mind in this moment. I stared into the overly large and red rimmed eyes of four men, standing on the other side of the glass, with a daft expression on my face. Their eyes, an image that I can easily conjure when I close my own, were all I could see of their faces, as they were the only things that weren’t covered by a black balaclava. One of the men was wearing a bright yellow jacket, but for the rest of them, I can’t be certain. I stood in front of them for far too long before the cogs, whirring in my brain, finally fell into place and I realised the gravity of the situation. It was in that moment that I prayed the alarm had been set in time and silently thanked my sister for being so insistent that I lock the doors as soon as I got in. It took another moment for me to realise that I hadn’t heard the sirens go off and it was then that I let out an ear piercing scream.
Upon hearing the words, “Oh my god Simone, there are people here,” leave my mouth, she was at my side. Then she was practically flying towards the landline, frantically punching in numbers. It was only upon reflection that she realised, in her panic, she was attempting to dial 911, which, even if she had succeeded, would not have assisted us in this country. Her thoughts were racing but one thing that was clear was that the doors were locked and, as far as she knew, that meant that the men couldn’t get inside.
I scrambled after my sister, but before I could reach her, a pot plant came soaring through the kitchen window, smashing the glass, and sending our alarm blaring, which was however, unheard by me, over the sound of my own heart racing. The scream that then left Simone’s mouth was one that rang in my ears as it reverberated against the walls, and shocked the neighbours into setting off their own panic button.
Simone was the oldest and was therefore trusted to take care of Hannah and I, and as soon as she realised the men had created a way in to the house, she felt responsible for making sure no harm came to us. Although this was no longer up to her, as the men clearly had the upper hand against three defenceless teenagers, she took it upon herself to attempt to protect us in any way possible.
It wasn’t long before three of the four men had jumped in through the broken window, after the pot plant. From the outside, the window was rather high off the ground and the fourth man, after having lifted his companions through, was left outside.
The first man in the house made a b-line directly for Simone and I. By now, we were huddled together at the start of the passageway that leads down to our bedrooms, and sits between the kitchen and another room that, in later years, has become my mom’s art studio. The passageway lights were not on, and we were therefore doused in shadow, but, despite this, the light from the rest of the house allowed me to see that the man in front of us brandished a knife. Very soon after realising this, however, it became clear to me that Simone was very much unaware of the existence of the weapon.
Many things then happened simultaneously. Hannah joined us, the fourth man entered the house, and Simone, in her attempts to protect Hannah and I, did not stop talking, which I later realised was a distraction mechanism, but, at the time, I thought was an extremely stupid thing to do.
Hannah, who was still in her room and unaware of the threat at this point, after hearing the screams, sensed movement in the house, and left her room to see shadows down the end of the passageway, where we were standing. Upon seeing her coming towards us, Simone screamed at her “Hannah run upstairs, go upstairs.” This was back the way she’d come but after a few steps in that direction she quickly realised that going upstairs would mean she was stuck there. She then made the decision that she would be safer with her sisters, than hiding upstairs with nowhere to go from there if anyone attempted to follow her.
It was while this was happening that the second man inside the house headed straight to the sliding door in an attempt to unlock it from the inside and let in the man left on the other side of the glass. He quickly realised that he was unable to open these locks without a key and was not about to now go in search of it. He and the fourth man, who was stuck outside, started shaking the doors back and forth in an attempt to derail them. They would need a different exit point as they couldn’t easily climb back out through the broken window. Before Simone could finish yelling at them, “I’ll get you key! Please just don’t break the door,” it slid of its rails, still intact, and swung open, hanging from the deadbolt.
All the commotion had awoken the dogs, which had, by this time, made their way to the dining room, and started barking at the men who were trying to work their way through the door. Molly, who barely came past the men’s ankles in height, was petrified and took to cowering under the dining room table while making us much noise as she could. Rocky, on the other hand, sick as he was, went ballistic, but as he was so weak, there wasn’t much he could do apart from make one hell of a racket. He was in no position to be a guard dog that night, but he did his best to protect us regardless.
Despite the dog’s attempts at scaring off the men, it wasn’t long before all four men were in the house. The first man inside was still holding Simone and I together, and the other three were running around the house looking for things to take with them; my two week old laptop, which was lying on the kitchen counter, being one of those things.
By the time that Hannah had made the decision that she would defy Simone’s plea for her to go upstairs and hide, the third man through the window, the one wearing the yellow jacket, had made his way down the passageway and spotted her. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back up the passageway to where Simone and I were standing. She joined our huddle, held together by the first man’s outstretched arms, standing slightly behind Simone’s right shoulder, with me behind her left. Hannah’s shock silenced her, as she was standing there in her skimpy summer pyjamas, with a face covered in spots of stark white pimple cream and cheeks soaked with tears. Her fear, however, doubled as she spotted the knife in the man’s right hand.
It was as Hannah was joining us that, to my utter astonishment, Simone refused to hand over the landline that the man standing in front of us was reaching out for. I started yelling at her to give it to him as she, unaware of the dangerous weapon in his hand, continued in her attempt to dial 911. She was panicking and the only clear thought going through her scrambled mind was that she needed to let someone know that we were in trouble. Despite her protests, he managed to tear the phone from her grasp and, immediately after, went for my cell phone, which I happened to be holding, and gave to him without complaint.
Simone began to beg the man in front of us not to hurt us. “Our parents aren’t here! It’s just the three of us!” she exclaimed.
We weren’t sure what these men expected to find in the house but we were certain it wasn’t this. The man composed himself quickly, but only after a clear expression of shock at hearing this crossed his face.
Looking back, we are sure that the man in front of us was frightened too. He did not want to hurt us, but I would not have put it past him if he was put in a situation in which he felt forced to, in order to help himself. In my attempts to be as compliant as possible, to stop him from having to make this decision, it seemed that Simone became more resistant. Obedience was how I saw to avoid any of us getting hurt but, to my utter disbelief, Simone, in her attempts at protecting us, was running her mouth. Although I didn’t understand the method to her madness, the shock of her protests frightened me. I felt it was my duty then to become the reasonable one, and kept my head while my panicking sisters behaved irrationally, in my eyes.
It was then, while Simone was gesturing wildly, as she tends to do when she talks, that the man noticed a ring on her finger. It was sterling silver, intricate and a gift she had received from her residence in Stellenbosch. It consisted of a simple thin band with a tiny indent in the shape of a triangle in the middle, which she wore on the forth finger of her right hand. He told her to give it to him as soon as he spotted it but, not wanting to part from it, she replied: “you don’t want this ring. It’s a crappy ring. It’s not worth anything.” I couldn’t believe I was hearing these objections, when it was so clear to me what could happen if we angered this man. I cried to her “just give him the ring!” but he didn’t wait for a response. He pulled the ring right off her finger, with hands which were stuffed into thick gardening gloves.
It was briefly after this encounter that something must have fallen into place in Simone’s brain because, for the first time since the men had climbed into the house, she heard the alarm blaring. Hannah and I were still completely unaware of the sound, too shocked to register anything that wasn’t happening directly in front of our eyes. Simone looked into the man’s face, and seeing the fear in it, she said: “The alarm is going off; people will be here soon, you need to leave.”
His eyes widen as he took in what she was saying and started shouting at the other three men to get out. The shock of realising that it had been quite a few minutes since they had first jumped through the window and people were sure to be on their way registered on his face. A feeling of relief washed over me as I realised that the men were reappearing from different parts of the house and moving in the direction of the broken sliding doors. Unfortunately, this feeling didn’t last long. Before I knew it, the man with the yellow jacket was standing inches from my face. I could smell the sweat on his skin, and the adrenaline, fuelled by anxiety, pumping through his veins. I was aware that he was shouting at me but I didn’t register the words at first. It was in this moment that I felt the hair on my arms rise, static running through them while they hung limp at my sides, unable to move. My panic cleared after a second and I finally heard him yell “where is the money?”
Coincidently, despite stocking the house with food and anything and everything we might need while they were gone, the thing that had slipped our parents minds was leaving us with any emergency cash. By the time we figured this out earlier that day, they were long gone. Along with our parents leaving us without money, it was the end of the month, which meant that the three of us probably had less than R100 of our own money to our names combined. This went along with the fact that we tended not to keep cash on us because, as most teenagers know, this usually leads to unnecessary spending. Little did we know how much not having a cent in the house would impact us on this particular evening.
I responded, in a shrill frightened voice, “we have no money, our parents left us nothing. I promise you, we have no money!” but the man did not want to believe me. He stayed rooted to the spot in front of me and continued to ask where the money was. I will never forget those eyes. Even after he was pulled out of the door by one of the other men, his eyes stayed burned into the back of my eyelids. They were wide open, enormous, brown eyes, with the pupils fully dilated. He was on something, for sure. I didn’t know what, but to come into a house the way they did, it didn’t surprise me if they were all high on drugs.
All four men disappeared through the door, the yellow jacket being the last thing I saw, and then they were gone, the dogs barking after them. I suddenly felt cold, standing on the tiles in my black denim shorts and a plain green t-shirt. Despite the fact that we were now alone, our fear did not dissipate just yet. We stood still for a moment looking at each other, thinking of what to do. Although the men had left, and no one was there, we could still be in danger.
Simone was the first to move, running to her room to find out if her phone had been taken. It had not. In fact, it looked as though her room hadn’t been entered at all because everything was where she had left it, including her laptop which was lying on her desk in plain sight. She grabbed her phone and immediately tried to call our parents. After both their phones went straight to voicemail, due to a lack of service where they were in the mountains, she tried our aunt Micki, my mom’s sister, who lived a few houses away. No answer.
Hannah had gone in search of her own phone but came back empty handed. It had been taken off her bed, where she had thrown it before leaving her room earlier to join us. She felt dirty, and violated, knowing that one of the men had entered her bedroom and searched her bed for her phone. With nothing else she could do at that moment, she began silently pacing in front of me, vulnerable and shivering, a never ending stream of tears running down her cheeks.
I grabbed the landline, which had been hastily left behind as it was useless to the men, thrown down on the dining room table as they were heading for the exit. I cursed myself internally for only knowing my parents’ numbers by heart but, although Simone had tried them already with no luck, I wanted to be useful and so tried them again.
It was then that Simone decided to send a voice note to a WhatsApp group with all of our family members on our mom’s side. The terror in her voice was evident, as she cried into the phone explaining briefly what had happened and asking for help. Each word came out in a sob, the alarm blaring in the background. It was our cousin Vince, who was in New York at the time, who responded first, with “Has anybody seen this?”
Within seconds the phone in my hand was ringing. The instant I heard my Uncle Peter’s voice, my mom’s brother, I had my first breakdown of the evening. Up until this moment I had been composed, not allowing myself to get emotional, but I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking and the tears from gushing as I explained to Uncle Peter what had happened. Even in the few unsteady words that I could get out, the explanation allowed me to finally register how truly petrified I was. I pressed my back into the column, which stands halfway down the passageway, feeling the cold concrete through the fabric of my t-shirt. It felt comforting to lean against something so solid. It was the only thing keeping me on my feet in that moment. The worry in Uncle Peter’s voice was evident, as he offered to drive through right away. He lived about 30 minutes from us, however, and I was sure our aunt, Micki, would come when she found out, so I told him to hold out until we got hold of her. The second I pressed the hang-up button, with fingers soaked in my salty tears, the phone started ringing again, but this time it was Micki and she was already on her way.
Simone and I were answering call after call as worried family members phoned to see what they could do, while Hannah paced. It wasn’t long before Deep Blue arrived, and then the police and, a few minutes later, Micki, who walked up the garden with our neighbour, who was in his pyjamas with bare feet, holding an enormous rifle. Pretty soon the house was flooded with people, who later included investigators and a counsellor, who was called by the police.
The next few hours passed in a hurried blur. The police questioned my sisters and me separately, while the investigators checked for finger prints and any sign of DNA the men might have left behind. The guards from Deep Blue swept the mountain, after finding a hole in our fence that it seemed the men had cut to enter the property and later to escape from it, while the neighbours tried to be useful. At some point my cousin, Micki’s son, and I went in search of the dogs, which had disappeared in all the commotion. We found them hiding at the bottom of the garden, absolutely terrified and shivering with fear. Before heading to Micki’s house, with the dogs, we spoke to the counsellor briefly, and she offered to come again the following day to check on us. Leaving one of the Deep Blue guards to watch the house until we returned the next morning, we climbed into Miki’s car and drove the short distance to her house to spend the night.
It was well after midnight before we arrived at Micki’s house and were finally left alone again. We didn’t speak of what happened after we left home, only of how we wished we could do something to warn our parents for what they were going to find out about when they finally got signal. We decided that none of us wanted to sleep alone that night, so we climbed into one double bed. All my attempts at trying to slow my racing heart with deep breaths were futile. I felt surreal, as if I was floating above my body and looking down on myself. My sisters were my anchor, and I held onto them tightly, for fear that if I let go, I might float off too far. Eventually, after what felt like hours, one by one, we fell into restless sleep.
By the time we woke up the following morning, my dad had received all the missed calls and had run up a hill to get signal and find out what had happened. It was then that he saw all the messages and after receiving no answer from any of our phones, he immediately called home. The phone rang for a while before the Deep Blue guard answered and my dad’s heart sank.
“Who are you and why have you answered the phone?”
“I’m from Deep Blue, there was a break-in here last night,” the guard answered in reply, confirming my dad’s fear.
“Where are my daughters?”
“At your sister.”
He immediately knew it was Micki that he was referring to and she was the next person he called. He spoke to Simone on the phone and, after making sure we were all definitely okay, he assured her that they were coming home. We were relieved; we couldn’t face our house without them.
He ran back down the hill towards our mom, who was having breakfast at the camp, and from the look of him she immediately sensed that something was wrong. The guilt they felt at leaving us home alone was raw in their hearts and they were terrified about how the experience had affected us. They packed in lightning speed and were driven along a bumpy road back to their car, as they had walked the previous day to the spot they had stayed that night.
As they got closer to civilisation the signal got stronger and as more messages started flooding through, their worries increased. With my mom constantly exclaiming that “we gotta go faster,” they could not drive back quick enough. The feeling of helplessness permeated through their bodies as they drove the distance in silence. The guilt weighed on their shoulders. After attempting to start a conversation about what could have happened, they decided it was best not to think about it while they were still so far away. When they finally walked through the front door of Micki’s house, the relief of seeing us in front of them unharmed was etched on their faces.
We finally returned home, to a distraught Clarebell, our domestic worker, for whom we had left a message with the guard to relay when she arrived that morning. She was as much a part of our lives as anyone and it was gut-wrenching that we couldn’t have for-warned her for what she would be coming home to.
The guard was relieved of his duties, the window and doors were fixed and the counsellor came in to check on us twice more after that night. We never heard from the police whether they ever caught the men, who, it was deduced from our descriptions, seemed to be part of a group that they had been after for a while.
We came to accept what happened and to learn that it was desperation that drove those men to break into a house containing three defenceless girls. None of us were harmed and for that we are grateful. Five years have now passed and, although we have mostly recovered, there are things that have stayed with us to this day. I don’t dwell on the “what ifs,” I just hope that what they got from that night was worth the fear that it has instilled in us.
